songwriting

christopher

my band have decided it's about time we started doing some original material, and i've tried to start writing songs myself. i've got three already done but i'm having some problems with inspiration...

does anyone have any advice?

Doctor J

Songwriting is very hard work. Pay attention to the structures of songs you like and how your favourite bands develop mood and atmosphere in their songs. Just try to be open to ideas and never be scared to try something different.

dimegetchapull

id agree with doctor j.what id like to add is once u get a main riff just base a song around the tempo/melody/key that the riff is in and u will have a song written pretty quickly...even just to get started and once u do get some songs down start thinking outside the box

projectmayhem

dimegetchapull wrote:

once u do get some songs down start thinking outside the box

vital, because you could get 1 or 2 songs down and think "these are good, lets keep going", following the exact same routine to get more songs down. you need to do different things for songs.

personally, i like to mess around with my brothers bass, and work with that first, or a drum. hell, i've often played some music and gone downstairs to listen to it. it becomes a completely different song through the floorboards, and a good template to start (if you want to do this play something random off an mp3 player. if you know what song is playing the effect is nill)

senordingdong

Just be sure that whenever you get an idea, be it big or small, you throw it down om paper as soon as possible.
Before long you'll have an archive.

EFC-4eva

senordingdong wrote:

Just be sure that whenever you get an idea, be it big or small, you throw it down om paper as soon as possible.
Before long you'll have an archive.

Exactly, always be thinking of songwriting. If your in a real crappy mood or something good has happened then its always a good starting point.

senordingdong

And you'll be kickign yourself if you havea good idea and then go home and can't remember it.

krd

Get blind drunk --- turn on a tape recorder --- take your guitar bash away.

In the morning when you wake up with -- rewind and listen

Repeat --

It's a form of Automatic writing shane mgcowan used to use.

No they healthiest. but what the hey!

LundiMardi

are we talking music or lyrics here? if both, what do you write first?

projectmayhem

i work both ways actually...

sometimes i think of some killer lyrics and write 'em in my "book o lyrix", and form a song, then when i sing them to myself i come up with a tune

other times i'll have a riff, lay that down, then hum a tune, then form words (but always pick a theme to keep continuity)

Beer is Life

Not saying anyone should follow suit, but Slayer for example, have in the past stated that their best material was written under certain...influences. Its worked well for them.......

projectmayhem

Beer is Life wrote:

Not saying anyone should follow suit, but Slayer for example, have in the past stated that their best material was written under certain...influences. Its worked well for them.......

listen to the quote from bill hicks on tool's third eye

also, the "throne" as it were, in the dark, can be a great place to think up good stuff

Closing Doors

Doctor J wrote:

Songwriting is very hard work. Pay attention to the structures of songs you like and how your favourite bands develop mood and atmosphere in their songs. Just try to be open to ideas and never be scared to try something different.

Hmmm I'd be of a completely different school of thought....songwriting should never be hard work. There are countless musicians who say that their "best song(s)" (whatever that means) fell out in a matter of minutes. Whereas if you're slogging away trying to "write a classic" etc etc it's going to sound forced the vast majority of the time. I've learned this the hard way

Also structure isn't something I ever concentrate on when writing, but that's me

Being open to new ideas is great advice though...

Doctor J

Maybe, if you're very lucky, you can pull a great song out of the ether, in fact you're probably one of a kind, but for most of us, ideas are nurtured and built upon until a song is formed. You might as well do something while waiting for the bolt of inspiration which may never come. Some of the greatest songs of our time have been laborious creations which took a lot of time and a lot of work to complete. If they sound forced, they're just not good songs. I've heard as many bad "couple of minute" songs as I have bad labours of love

A good song is a good song and understanding other peoples songs can be very, very useful when it comes time to work on your own.

"Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration." Thomas Edison

The guy in the audience said something like: " Hey, man, how about makin' a song for us right here." Lennon, as usual, was quick, his face tightened and he throttled out the reply:
"Do you know what it takes to compose a song?"

Closing Doors

I wouldn't say I'm one of a kind, and the trick I think, is not to wait for this bolt of inspiration to hit you. It happens fairly infrequently (though it happened to me yesterday actually ) but it does happen. Yesterday I picked up the guitar & my fingers formed a chord shape I'd never played before and a song popped out, which is an incredible feeling.

I've never heard a musician say that the worst songs they've written were the ones written in the shortest space of time. There's a difference between sitting down to write a song in 10 minutes and plucking it from the ether, so to speak though.

"One of the wonderful things about music is if you get too consciously involved in trying to make something a certain way in order to please other people, music just trips you up and pulls itself away from you. You lose the knack, or you lose the inspiration."
-Damien Rice

Doctor J

That's not much use to the OP though, saying if the song doesn't write itself it's not worth writing isn't going to help his current predicament

To be honest, the song I am most happy with took me over 5 years to complete. I had gotten so far but couldn't magic up something I was happy with. One day after working on it on and off, I came up with what was needed and finished it off. Some styles of music need more than three chords and the truth and simple verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle8-verse-chorus-chorus structure. Paying attention to structure and details, orchestrating other instruments, dynamics, instrumental breaks, rhythms and counter-rhythms, it all makes for variety and can lead to more interesting and unique compositions and can open new avenues to different compositions.

For some people, strumming some basic chords on a guitar is enough, for others, they work on their technique and learn music theory to expand their possibilities and songwriting, to me anyway, is no different. You can do more with songs than just strum a few chords. It pays to see where others have gone and learn from them.

Edit -> I mean, what if Paul McCartney hadn't bothered working on his songs and had stuck with "Scrambled Eggs"?

John

Doctor J wrote:

Edit -> I mean, what if Paul McCartney hadn't bothered working on his songs and had stuck with "Scrambled Eggs"?

It would mean we'd never have been subjected to "Mull of Kintyre" and the world would have been a better place.

Arucard

projectmayhem wrote:

listen to the quote from bill hicks on tool's third eye

also, the "throne" as it were, in the dark, can be a great place to think up good stuff

Bill died before Tool even wrote that song, it's not their 3rd eye he's referring to.

projectmayhem

Arucard wrote:

Bill died before Tool even wrote that song, it's not their 3rd eye he's referring to.

...
it's just a quote on their album dude, never said it was about them, or their song, or anything of the sort

Closing Doors

Doctor J wrote:

That's not much use to the OP though, saying if the song doesn't write itself it's not worth writing isn't going to help his current predicament

Haha true I suppose. Though he was saying he lacks inspiration, the source of which is normally non-musical I'd have thought.

As regards working on songs for 5 years, that kind of thing happens to me a hell of a lot too (though I've only been writing songs for 4 ). I've a tendency for riffs to just fall out of me more frequently than "completed" songs, or half a verse rather than complete lyrics. You kind of build up an arsenal...the songs are there, you don't really have to do anything...then someday you hit on another flash of inspiration and finish it (or get closer to doing so). I can be a notoriously slow songwriter...or incredibly fast!

But hey if you do things differently that's cool, I'd love to hear the tune that took you five years?

Doctor J wrote:

For some people, strumming some basic chords on a guitar is enough, for others, they work on their technique and learn music theory to expand their possibilities and songwriting, to me anyway, is no different. You can do more with songs than just strum a few chords. It pays to see where others have gone and learn from them.

You can do more with a single note than a lot of the so-called "technically-advanced" guitarists can do with all their sweep picking etc imho. Not that it isn't nice to rock out occasionally